Grigoletti makes superb wines a family affair

Posted on by David
Slender and willowy, Bruno Grigoletti reaches his big hands into the canopy of a grape pergola and starts ripping out the extra foliage. In his late 70s, he works at a pace that would exhaust a man a third his age. Bruno manages a dozen family vineyards. They total about 15 acres (6 ha) in and around the commune of Nomi on the west bank of the Adige river, 9 miles (15 km) south of Trento. Some of the heat-loving varieties grow at the edge of the village in the alluvial soils of the Adige. But the most striking wines come from steep vineyard plots on the limestone hills behind the village. Bruno prunes the white grapes—mostly pinot grigio, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc—three times across...Read More

Grill 23 bar menu demonstrates steakhouse evolution

Posted on by Pat and David
Grill 23 in Boston's historic Salada Tea building launched 30 years ago to make sure that the business guys in Back Bay had a proper steakhouse where they could seal new ventures over a big, juicy slabs of beef. It's still under the same ownership, but left the old steak-and-martini steakhouse formula behind years ago. With its succession of smart and inventive chefs, Grill 23 keeps refining what a steakhouse should be. These days the kitchen operates under corporate culinary director Eric Brennan, and just last week he launched an ambitious new bar menu with a party (above). Since Grill 23 has only had a discreet bar area since 2014, the restaurant isn't locked into tradition. The new menu is a smart cross between steakhouse...Read More

Hearty Trentino dishes complement the wines

Posted on by David
If you're going to spend all morning tasting 128 wines, you really need some hearty food to follow up. The Trento cuisine is a fascinating blend of Italian and Germanic foodways, and it's well suited to the regional wines. After we sampled our way through the wines, most of us had absorbed enough alcohol, even without swallowing, that we really needed a good meal. The Trentino wine consortium made sure we got it! We started with a glass of light white wine made from the Incrocio Manzoni Bianco grape. It's part of a group named for professor Luigi Manzoni (1888-1968), who experimented with crossing a number of grapes during the 1920s and 1930s at Italy's oldest school of oenology in Conegliano, north of Venice. The...Read More

Trentino shows off its superb wines at Mostra Vini

Posted on by David
The wine district of Trentino is one of Italy's best-kept secrets—at least from Americans. That translates into real bargains on some outstanding wines from unfamiliar producers. Trentino is the southern half of the region of Trentino-Alto Adige east of Lombardy and west of the Veneto. To help you place it, the wine district more or less corresponds to the Trento province in the map below. With high-altitude vineyards on a mix of dolomitic limestone and volcanic porphyry, the area produces startlingly good sparkling wines in the style of Champagne, highly aromatic white wines similar to the style of Alsace, and some fascinating local reds that many Americans have never heard of. Napoleon rolled through in the early 19th century, and many chardonnay, merlot, cabernet, and...Read More

Eating like George Martin on Montserrat

Posted on by Pat
I don't know what Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Sting, or Eric Clapton liked to eat when they came to relax and record on Montserrat. But George Martin was particularly fond of a good pork tenderloin with creamy mushroom sauce. In the late 1970s, Martin was seduced by the unspoiled beauty and tranquil pace of life on the tiny Caribbean island. He opened AIR Studio in 1979, and for about a decade a steady stream of the top names in the music business came here to record with the producer extraordinaire. Almost 80 albums were created on Montserrat before AIR closed in 1989 after the destruction of Hurricane Hugo. But Olveston House, Martin's breezy and unpretentious island retreat, remains. Martin and his family would enjoy the...Read More

Montserrat rum cake is a deep, dark mystery

Posted on by Pat
I felt pretty certain that most of the folks on Montserrat would have given me the shirt off their backs if I had needed it. But even during the high-spirited days of the week-long St. Patrick's Day festivities, that generosity only extended so far. No baker, it seems, is willing to part with her recipe for rum cake, the Montserrat version of the dark West Indian cake that is so different from the paler, less robust spirit-soaked fruitcakes that Europeans and Americans make. I had my first taste of the dense, almost fudge-like treat in my hometown of Cambridge, Mass., supplied by Bernadine Greenaway, one of the many Montserratians who live at least part of the year in Boston. Bernadine makes cakes for family and...Read More

Goat water hits the spot on Montserrat

Posted on by Pat
Montserrat's St. Patrick's Day parade—a whirl of colorful costumes and steel drums—doesn't kick off until 3 in the afternoon. That leaves plenty of time for checking out the entertainment and crafts booths at the Heritage Village in Salem—and for eating. The aroma of jerk chicken cooking on outdoor grills fills the fairgrounds, but the most popular dish is “Goat Water.” Montserrat's national dish, it's a spicy Caribbean take on Irish stew. I gravitated to the stall of Virginia Allen, who managed to tend her big pot of goat water without spilling a drop on her beautiful traditional outfit made with a signature Madras fabric of green, orange, and white. In addition to serving goat water at festivals, Virginia makes the dish every Friday and offers...Read More

Montserrat celebrates St. Patrick with Caribbean verve

Posted on by Pat
I never found anyone serving green beer during the St. Patrick's Day Festival on the island of Montserrat. But local ginger beer, I quickly discovered, is a perfectly good substitute. One of 14 United Kingdom Overseas Territories, Montserrat is the only island nation (besides the Emerald Isle) where St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday. And I have to say that Caribbean style adds real flair to the celebration of Ireland's patron saint. The 5,000 or so Montserratians who inhabit this island in the British West Indies take their Irish roots seriously. Just ask any of the Allens, Sweeneys, Buntins, Farrells, O'Garrs and O'Briens who trace their roots back to the 17th century Irish indentured servants who made a new life here after putting in...Read More

Frescobaldi celebrates its Tuscan estates

Posted on by David
There's poetry in the Frescobaldi soul, and I don't just write that because I like so many of the family's wines. Back in the 13th century, poet Dino Frescobaldi helped his exiled friend Dante Alighieri recover the first seven books of the Divine Comedy, enabling him to complete one of the great masterpieces of world literature. About that same time, the Frescobaldi family also started to focus on making wine in the Tuscan countryside. A couple of years ago, Lamberto Frescobaldi took over the leadership of the family business, and since he has a son at college in Rhode Island, the chief often passes through Boston. When he was here in March, we had a chance to sit down and taste some current releases and...Read More

Savoring Sara Moulton’s spring pea soup

Posted on by Pat and David
Ever the prodigal daughter, chef Sara Moulton returned to her roots at Harvest Restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., for the launch of her latest cookbook, Sara Moulton's Home Cooking 101: How to Make Everything Taste Better. For readers who only know Moulton from her television work—a pioneer host for nearly 10 years on the Food Network and more recently the host of “Sara's Weeknight Meals” on public television, the woman has serious chops. She worked for seven years as a restaurant chef, cooked with Julia Child in her home for dinner parties, spent four years testing and developing recipes for the late, lamented Gourmet magazine, and ran Gourmet's dining room for more than two decades. But she started at Harvest in Cambridge—a brainchild of Modernist architect...Read More